Tag: 2011goals

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Fitness Health

On The Relay 2011

Basic overview of this event.  12 people run a relay across 199 miles from Calistoga, CA down to Santa Cruz to raise money for organ donations.  This past weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in The Relay with Team Palantir.  The team and I want to thank my roommate Dang for filling in on a last minute volunteer swap.  We’re grateful that you helped out and showed up on time so we didn’t get DQ’d.  For the race I was assigned Legs 4, 16, and 28 which wasn’t the hardest set of legs at all.  Overall though it was a harder than I thought it was going to be, but also way more fun that I had imagined.  Who knew you could have have such energy running ~17 miles over 3 legs on ~1 hour of sleep.  It was an adventure for sure (our van having a bit more adventure than the other team van).  I’ll be going over a smattering of some of the highlights that stood out for me.

Our Start aka (Breaking and Entering)
Our official start time was April 30th 2 p.m. We arrived a bit before to sign in, decorate the van, swap runners, and redistribute provisions between the vans.  As 2 rolled around our first runner took her spot with the other 2 p.m. teams and took off.  We sent her off to cheers and hoots then headed back to the van to start our journey…only to find it was locked and we left the keys inside.  After some confusion, panic, and consideration of just breaking the window, a multitude of plans went into action.  We called AAA, some of us began pulling on the side window so that someone else could stick his fingers inside to pull the lock up, and another guy went off to get a coat hanger…(a few mins pass).  The coat hanger is steps away, AAA is getting our location, we’re almost touching the lock…just need a bit more room…pull a bit more…BOOM!  Broken glass everywhere…some minor cuts and a lot of shocked faces.  No more need for the hanger, thanks AAA, but we solved our problem.  Uh…time to roll out.

First Leg Runners (The Lost Lambs)
As we’re finally driving we get a call from Runner 1…she thinks she’s lost…wait wait…yes she did miss the turn.  We drive over to the turn and cheer her on.  Her and about 5 other runners miss a poorly marked turn…sad times.  She’s pissed, but we tell her just wait till she sees the van.  We’re thinking this is a great start =)  Our van name is now No Aplologeez.

Fourth Leg (Ditched)
This was my leg so I didn’t get the story till after.  It was a longer 7.4 mile leg going towards Yountville and man was it hot.  The van gave me a water boost at mile 4 which I asked for.  I didn’t give them my long sleeve shirt (stupid me) which they asked for.  Luckily they stopped again.  This time cheering me on and telling me not to worry about the van…which was pulled over to the side of the road and at a precarious 45 degree angle down to the right.  I continued running and hoping they were ok.  As I approached the handoff point I saw the van speed by me and the next runner already in place.  Apparently another van brought our next 2 runners to the exchange just in case our van didn’t make it in time.  Also there are photos of about 10 people trying to push the van up to no avail.  Luckily a truck driving by just happen to have a tow and tow our van out.  Already feeling the spirit of comradarie in the event.

Break Time (Birth of Pizzabox Van)
As we pulled into the van exchange some people asked if we were the team from Palo Alto.  We answered yes we’re hte broken window, towed out of a ditch team.  They laughed and shared the stories with others around them.  Notoriety up!  We met up with our second van of runners and told them of our adventures.  They were there for the broken window incident and thought we were joking about the ditch incident.  Our 6th runner had a short detour when he hit a dead end in the residential area and a kid and his dad playing ball told him he was probably in the wrong place =)  Still an awesome time on that run.  We went off to try and grab dinner.  After being rejected by a few places we found a small food court type area that had a Gott’s, Pika Pika, and Filippi’s Pizza Grotto & Fine Wine.  We each went to get our own dinner and eat outside Gott’s.  Filippi’s was even nice enough to give us a pizzabox to cover up the window as long as put their ad facing out.  Done Deal!  A short stop at home depot for some tape and we had ourselves a new pizzabox window.

Start of the Night Runs
Our 2nd batch of runs were basically all night runs.  We more or less had awesome runs here and began seeing and passing some teams.  Our first runner even found a running buddy in Team Grind’s runner though our second runner smoked their guy.  For my 2nd run I decided to use hte Vibram’s.  I was feeling good and it was not hot.  My leg took me down Sir Francis Drake through an area I had driven before heading up to eat Tomales Oysters.  Some highlights from my run are having my teammates rile up some bar goes to cheer for me and having them tell me there was a girl up ahead I needed to pass because she looked weak.  To be fair I got passed by A-Team’s runner at about the same point too.

Golden Gate Run (Fastest Way to get DQ’d, Karaoke, and Eye of the Tiger)
This leg was for our 6th runner.  We had an awesome start by having the volunteers tell us we can’t cheer due to the start being in a residential area.  Our driver then yelled out his cheer to the shock of the volunteer…oops.  During a couple of his climbs we drove next to him singing him some requested songs.  Unfortunately we led him astray and he had to climb the hill up to the Golden Gate twice.  I think we more than made up for it by finding him on the bridge, slowing down to his pace, and blasting Eye of the Tiger for a good 5 minutes.  Luckily there wasn’t much traffic and the few cars we did see passed us on the right lane.

Break Time 2 (Sleeping at the Office)
We headed into the exchange point, met up with our second van, and got some free soup being handed out by volunteers (so good).   After chatting a bit we bolted off to the office to get some shut eye.  Getting at the office I think everyone thought about showering…but weighing that with sleep we stuck with sleeping.  After about 1 hour of sleep we were up and off to meet up for our final legs.  As we pulled into the van exchange we heard some excalmations by onstanders, “Pizzabox Van!”  We’re famous =)  When we got out we noticed a magnet slapped onto our van.  It said “You’ve been tagged by the A-Team Sucka!”  Touché A-Team touché.  Their van had the big red stripe and was blasting the A-Team song.

My Final Leg (Death by Hill Climb)
We were going pretty strong on the final legs.  Basically coming down 280 through Palo Alto, down into Cupertino, and up the mountains to Skyline.  My run was actually through Cupertino into Stevens Canyon Road.  I actually biked this with Dang and Joe a few weeks go.  I was going pretty strong into Stevens Canyon Road, but about 1.5 miles into the climb I just gassed.  It was so hot and I was so tired my pace dropped significantly.  I ended up finishing just under a 10 min pace.  Sorry team!  Note to self, more hill climbing training.

Up the Mountain (Rocket Runners)
The next 2 runners after me had the luxury of climbing about 1000 ft each in 3 miles.  They rocked it coming in at under 10 min/mile paces each and passing about 8 teams each as well.  We made multiple stops and blasted music.  At one particular stop we were blasting Venga Boys and dancing.  One of the runners stopped and danced with us haha.  One of our runners even passed a bike (he said he didn’t know what to say to the cyclist).  I think we were all just so happy to be officially done we were having a great time cheering people on.

The Finish Line (Finished and Finally Showers)
We passed off to the other van for their final legs and took off to hit the house of a family friend of one of our runners.  They were so nice and so gracious to let us use their place.  We all took our showers…it was glorious.  We even snacked a bit on some chips and guac and salsa.  Sooo good.  We continued to chill for a bit and then headed off to meet with our other runners at the finish.  We saw them pull up around 4:20 and ran with our final runner across the finish!

The After (Dinner and News)
We went back to the family friend’s house and everyone hung out and got ready for dinner which was awesome.  Quinoa, fruit salad, salmon, chicken, corn bread, mac & cheese…oh so so good. We found out we finished 28/220 overall and 1/15 in our division of corporate mixed!  Way better than we thought we’d do.  Then we also found out Osama had been found and killed.  Wow what an end to a weekend!

Thanks
Thanks to all the runners on the Team and for the friends that hosted/cooked/volunteered for us!  Had an awesome time with you all!
Van 1: Ann, Kim, Tom, Ashling, and Ryan 
Van 2: Chris, Amy, Amanda, Courtney, Shreyas, Lisa
Volunteers: Dang and Shreyas’s parents
Others: Bagels and bananas that gave their lives.  Random ppl who helped get our van out.  Filippi’s Pizza Grotto & Fine Wine for the pizzabox.

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2011 Goals March Update

March is gone and now it’s time for an update.  I also officially turned 30 which made my body fat meter add a percent for me =)

Diet:
Still not quite as strict as I should be, but overall being conscious of it has been helping.  Only downside has been a couple days of gluttony with food and beer.  Strangely this has correlated with a certain roommate being back from his trip.

Sleep:
Average Sleep for March: 6.15 hours.  Still within limits, but it feels like I’ve been sleeping less the past month.

Workout:
Worked out 24 times in 31 days. Still excellent.  I’ve been concentrating more on runs vs other cardio due to the The Relay at the end of next month.

Body:
A stall here this month.  Basically still in the 12%-13% range.

Stretch:
Stretched 20 days. Doing much better.

Social:
Considered social 18 times.  Had a wedding to go to, but Halo play has been down the past month due to copious amounts of work.

Image:
I won’t lie.  I slacked.  At least I got a haircut.

 

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2011 Goals February Update

Wow it’s already March!  Feb went by fast.  The fact that this is still tracking is a win in and of itself.

Diet:
The diet has slipped a bit this month in that I haven’t been as structured in my cheating.  There have been meals where I allowed a piece of cake or a slice of pizza.  To get back on track I think it’ll be easier to move to a 12 cheat meals a month deal.  Should equate to 1 day a week.  Still don’t have the sudden wowness due to the diet, but like my coworker mentioned a good way to tell how good it’s been is to go off it and see how bad it is haha.  I don’t feel like doing that quite yet so we’ll have to find out later.  Another adjustment in the good direction has been to cut out the soy and legumes.  I’ve moved over to almond milk and will occasionally use coconut milk as well.  I will post on opinions on these at some point when I feel I’ve give them enough time to make a fair judgement.

Sleep:
Average Sleep for Feb: 6.17 hours.  Made the goal, but this is a drop of 13 mins from last month.

Workout:
Worked out 20 times in 28 days. Still excellent.  I also believe that the workouts are paying dividends as I did do a 10k in a much faster time than I expected.

Body:
Trend is still in a good direction from mid 13%-14% down to the 12%-13% range.

Stretch:
Stretched 15 days. Upward trend?  Barely

Social:
Considered social 18 times.  Helped that we had the company ski trip this month.

Image:
Less good compared to last month, but still not slacking here.

Physical Exam:
Got the stats for my physical exam.  Mostly normal with the cholesterol looking excellent as my doc mentioned.  I will be pulling this section off future updates as I think I’ve done all I wanted to do with it for now.

 

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2011 Goals January Update

I wasn’t tracking a lot of these stats until almost mid January, so think of these numbers as a half month’s update/starting point (though that’s a bit unfair to me because I was technically way worse before Jan).

Diet:
I’ve maintained a decent diet the past month only cheating about once a week. I’m not sure I feel suddenly way better like many proponents of Paleo diet say they do. No sudden increase in energy or lack thereof, but I have read that the body takes about 3 weeks to adjust so we’ll see.  Also note that I am not strict Paleo as I will have soy milk on occasion or eat things with butter or dairy in them (though I do try to avoid it).

Sleep:
Average Sleep for Jan: 6.39 hours W00t!

Workout:
Worked out 17 times in 22 days. Looking good.

Body:
I only got the BI meter on the 17th, so this is about half a month’s worth of data. They’re pretty spastic as far as numbers go, but the trend is down from mid 15% to mid 13%-14%.

Stretch:
Stretched 14 days. I’ll consider this to be something to work on.

Social:
Still no meals upstairs this month. That said there are other ways to be social and it happened 6 times. Another area to work on.

Image:
Have been pretty good, my hair may still look wild sometimes, but it’s by choice…kinda

Physical Exam:
So I did it, but I need to sign up for some online thing to get my actual numbers. That being said the doc said everything looked good.

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Diet Health

On Dieting

This post may be a bit long, but I just wanted to write a bit about my experiences in changing around how I eat and maybe someone else can gain something from it as well.

As I mentioned in my 2011 Goals post in the past few years I’ve gotten more interested in trying out various changes to my diet to see if they make a difference and also just because.  Who knows why, just to try maybe.  I tend to avoid fad diets that give you little nutrition and prefer to focus more on the more holistic lifestyle change type things as they seem more sustainable and healthier.  I tend to go on and off these diet changes as I feel like it and maybe that’s why I keep changing it around.  Just to keep things new.

This started out with just recording what I was eating and guesstimating the caloric content.  This actually worked pretty in making me watch what I ate because well…I would hate to drink that soda then have to write down the 160 calories I wasted on it.  I’m actually pretty sure it drove some people crazy because I can get a bit OCD sometimes about these kinds of things.  I believe this was a good exercise to start with because more than anything it made me more aware of the “cost” of eating certain foods and since I tend to eat certain foods more I got pretty good at guesstimating without looking stuff up all the time.  Sure I may be off by 500 calories at the end of the day…but isn’t that better than not knowing at all?

The next diet that actually piqued my interest was after hearing about how a New York Times food columnist lost weight.  Mark Bittman’s Vegan before 6 approach was interesting to me for two reasons:

  1. I’ve never tried being vegan before.
  2. I can eat whatever I want for dinner which is actually generally my largest meal (I know I know, but sue me it’s how I grew up)

I tried it for about 3 months and found that it’s amazingly hard to be a true vegan.  My breakfasts always consisted of oatmeal with agave with maybe fruit.  Lunches were always salad of some sort or cooked veggies and maybe some sort of starch like rice or potatoes.  To be honest, I like meat and was pretty hungry by 3 or 4.  There aren’t many pastries or breads to eat because they tend to contain butter, eggs, or honey.  Then I found hummus and pita.  Apples and peanut butter were also great.  After the initial adapting phase I got used to it.  Near the end of my experiment I happen to have a blood panel done.  The results were pretty good.  BP good, fasting glucose levels good, cholesterol awesome (I had more HDLs than LDLs and an overall low score), but considering I’ve never done a blood test before (at least that I can remember) I couldn’t say it was directly related to my diet.  But I wouldn’t discount the diet completely either.  Either way it’s not a bad way to eat since you have dinner to curb your cravings, but still a bit difficult if you’re not prepping your own breakfast and lunches.  Again milk, egg, honey…they show up everywhere.

Finally to my most recent venture inspired by the very popular Paleo Diet trend right now.  I remember hearing about this maybe a year ago and thinking that it was interesting…but alas I am Asian and love my rice, and so was not ready to embark on the experiment.  Now that it’s gained a bit more traction and there’s a bit more study around it I’m ready to give it a shot.  At the very least I can have my beloved meats (sorry animal lovers…I like my meat).  Paleo itself is a pretty strict diet, but I’ve found many people do paleo spirited diets.  I say in the spirit of paleo because they allow small cheats like the occasional milk product or legume.  In the interests of being flexible, which ultimately leads me to stay sane and stick to it more, you’ll find me eating in the spirit of paleo with the occasional total cheat meal/day as I come from a family of carb eaters.  We loves our man tou and butter.  I’ll be posting my daily intake so as to be honest to myself on my eats page and just for record keeping.  There is no greater motivation than to see your track record and to aim to do better than you did the day before.

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Fitness Health

VFF Longest Run Yet

Looks like posting the 2011 goals have been useful as I’ve hit the gym more often than not as of late.  Recording stats is also probably helping.  It must be the RPG nerd in me.

So today’s run has been the longest run in the VFF’s so far.  Ran a 10k split at 2 paces.  First 5k@10 min/mile and 2nd 5k@~9 min/mile.  I say approx because I tried to push a faster pace and then ended up having to slow it down a bit.  So I just did the math and found it averaged to just about 9.  To protect the rubbing areas I turned to bandaids which actually worked really really well.  Unfortunately I think I’m feeling what may be a new callous forming around the ball of my feet.  Maybe this is just part of what’s needed to push distance in the VFFs?

Finally, the Bio Impedance fat meter came today.  After trying it a few times I think I can get pretty wild readings.  So I think in the interest of keeping things consistent I’m going with an average right after waking and an average right before bed.  More than anything I’ll be tracking the trend over time since the actual % can vary depending when you use it, how hydrated you are, and even how you hold it.

 

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Welcome to 2011

2010 thanks for the times.  I can’t say I’m too sorry to see you move on though.  Looking forward to 2011.  I don’t usually do the resolution thing so I’m going to call them goals.  The important thing for me is that they’re measurable, incremental, and will address more balance in my life…also having it down on here means it’s harder to cheat or say I forgot.

Diet:
It’s been a while since I went off the Vegan before 6 so it’s probably about time to jump back into something.  I’ve been looking at Paleo/Primal and the slow carb diet from 4HB.  I’ve found them to be similar in many aspects and will be trying to follow the spirit of them.  Basically high protein, good fats, low carbs, avoid grains and dairy when possible.  I may also include some of the concepts from 4HB like the cheat day since I prefer flexibility in my choices.

Sleep:
On a regular sleep cycle get at least 6 hrs a day…or at least 6 hours average.  Luckily I have a flexible company that allows me to consider the stretch goals as well.
(Stretch Goal) Polyphasic sleep
(Uber Stretch Goal) Uberman Sleep Cycle

Workout:
3 times a week (Any physical activity counts lifting, running, cycling, sports, etc)

Body:
I just purchased a BI meter so unsure what current bodyfat % is.  Goal is to 12% or lose 3% whichever is more % points
(Stretch) Get to 10%

Stretch:
Stretch for at least 5 minutes every day.

Social:
Let’s do more of this.
Eat 2 meals a week upstairs…sitting down not standing.

Image:
Don’t be a lazy bum everyday. By this I mean shave and fix my wild morning hair when applicable.
(Stretch) Get haircuts more often (Really Stretch) Update the wardrobe.

Physical Exam:
Do one yearly
Progress: Done.  I actually already did this, but it took almost 8 years of me talking about doing it so I had to put it down.

I’ll be tracking my progress locally and may post updates once in a while.